


The One Person You Meet In Hell

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hell!Fic, No but did I mention SPOILERS, SPOILERS FOR THE REICHENBACH FALL
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-17
Updated: 2012-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-29 16:43:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>(Title taken shamelessly from Mitch Alborn's "The Five People You Meet In Heaven")</p>
    </blockquote>





	The One Person You Meet In Hell

**Author's Note:**

> (Title taken shamelessly from Mitch Alborn's "The Five People You Meet In Heaven")

That there’s a hell at all, that’s the first surprise.

 

It’s safe to say that Jim Moriarty fully believed that pulling that trigger was the end, literally, of his existence, consciousness. His life he had planned meticulously, almost to that last spontaneous second. His afterlife, however, he had not arranged as thoroughly.

 

So when he opens his eyes – opens his eyes! – to see white lino flooring, his first thought is that he has survived. _Shit_. A medical miracle? Did his omnipotence really stretch to immortality? You spend so long feeding the normal people your _special story_ that slowly, slowly, you end up believing it yourself. So they say.

 

But if this is a hospital it’s a quiet one at that; there is a pronounced absence of noise that is almost painful, similar to having hands forced over one's ears – the knowledge that something is being blocked from you, something important. He’s not in a bed but sat on a white plastic chair, moulded back and metal legs, pushed against the wall.

 

Everything’s so fucking white.

 

He wants to laugh but can’t; his body isn’t ready yet; he’s still processing. Alone in a white room: white floor, white walls, white furniture – he’s sat on one of eight chairs in total, he does a swift count, which are the only objects within the four equal walls. His eyesight is still immaculate so he takes stock of the scratch that proceeds diagonally down the wall opposite from him. Sharp object, broad, capable of penetrating plaster. The swoop indicates a pulling motion, downwards-

 

He doesn’t need to continue his observation to deduce the scratch’s provenance.

 

Jim still doesn’t understand the white walls.

 

He blinks and there is a man standing before him, hand outstretched, no restraints, just the silence of command.

 

“Hell,” Jim Moriarty says, unmoving. “Have to say I wasn’t expecting that one.”

 

“They rarely are,” the man replies. He’s not tall or imposing as one would expect a harbinger of doom to be; he doesn’t have wings, or red eyes, and he’s not dressed in a suit. He is a man, the very sort of man Jim Moriarty despised back when he was alive, on Earth: an ordinary man in beige slacks and a open-collared navy shirt.

 

“There’s a God, then?”

 

This ordinary man smiles, or more correctly the corners of his mouth turn up like one blessed with the smugness of knowledge; Jim is able to recognise it because he lived it, once. “ _No_.”

 

“But this is hell.”

 

“This is hell, yes,” the man looks down at his outstretched hand. “I presumed you would come quietly.”

 

Jim scrunches his mouth up to the side; his eyes widen; he is unable to help himself; he always was a warped caricature of a man. “Then I suppose I _must_ , musn’t I?”

 

The man with the hand held out does not voice that he never did have a choice in the matter.

 

Jim Moriarty takes his hand.

 

It’s all very _gay_.

 

He blinks and somehow they aren’t in the room anymore – he can tell, but only slightly; in this room the dimensions feel the same but they’re _not_ ; it must be the white, his eyes playing tricks on him. But he knows this is different. They’re moving, walking almost through walls – how can he not _see_? How can he not _understand_?

 

“The white,” Jim says as he is led through a blink into another room – the same but different; different, but the same. “I gather that’s some sort of joke.”

 

The man holding his hand doesn’t look at him, doesn’t turn to recognise – he stops, without warning, forcing Jim into two stumbling steps ahead of him. A tug backwards. A man put in his place.

 

“You committed suicide,” the man says.

 

Jim Moriarty merely shrugs and asks him if they can move on, please; he’s a busy man and doesn’t like to be kept waiting, even for his own eternal torment.

 

The irony doesn’t occur to him because he isn’t thinking of the heat and how it’ll burn him, cook him like a prime cut of meat never able to make a dish – they left it out in the sun too long and it rotted, didn’t it. There were maggots crawling through it.

 

It doesn’t occur to him because there’s a new sensation occupying him, this terrifying thing that he can only assume is being _out of control_. Lower in the hierarchy. Courtier to the king. The dead, to the living.

 

They begin to walk again. Everything is still white, still unfathomable, and he’s still not been told why – somehow that’s a question that matters more to him than _where_ ; or _what_ ; or, most mystifyingly, _how_.

 

“So what is it you do, here?”

 

Jim Moriarty also doesn’t know that the time for conversation has passed.

 

“I assume they pay you _devilishly_.”

 

The talk won’t hurt him.

 

“Good people skills, I suppose you need.”

 

(The next bit will.)

 

A door forms in front of him; he forgets to blink and is treated to the inexplicable. He laughs, once, and it doesn’t echo. They are two men in a square, white room, facing a door.

 

Obviously doors are significant; Jim has read enough books.

 

“These the gates of hell, are they? I have to say they’re not very impressive.”

 

There is the click of a lock, a key being turned from the other side of the door. Sharp but quiet. There are no screams of the damned, cracking of whips, the grinding of machinery that he has seen painted so often, spoken out to him, those warnings. They never mattered. Fear of damnation never did stop the wheels of his repulsive propulsion; he was never afraid, and is not now.

 

Why would he be?

 

It is only the child that fears the monster in a fairytale, a mother’s caution, a brother’s fabrication. The ignorant make beasts of the unknown and the superstitious hold resonance in signs, symbols, changes in the weather.

 

Jim knows there isn’t a God. From the horse’s mouth, if you’ll pardon the expression.

 

The door begins to move.

 

He wishes it would creak. Oh, where’s the drama? You’re _hell_ , put on a show! This is all rather dull – he’d longed for some horns, at least. If you’re going to perpetuate an image then fire whoever does your PR, because this is frankly disappointing.

 

The door is opening.

 

“Come on, Satan,” Jim Moriarty hisses, “you’re boring me.”

 

The door opens.

 

That there’s a hell at all, that was his first surprise.

 

His second is John Watson stood in that doorway, arms folded, eyes down.

 

There isn’t a God, of course not, but sometimes prayers are answered.


End file.
